Washington, DC – As time ticks down on the Biden Presidency, there has been a renewed pushed by advocacy groups and attorneys to get President Biden to commute federal death sentences.
On Monday two separate groups sent out separate letters urging him to commute the sentences of people on federal death row before he leaves office.
One of those letters was co-authored by more than 130 civil and human rights organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who issued a letter to President Biden on Monday.
Meanwhile, a second group, a coalition of District Attorneys, Attorneys General, law enforcement officials, former judges, U.S. Attorneys and other criminal justice leaders, submitted a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday as well.
“The death penalty is riddled with error, bias, and injustice. It targets the poorest and most vulnerable among us while failing to provide any meaningful public safety benefits,” said Amy Fettig, acting co-executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution who led the second group.
Fettig added, “During President Trump’s first term, his administration carried out 13 executions in just six months, ending a 17-year hiatus in federal executions. President Biden is a man of conscience, and he has a moral and urgent responsibility to use his executive authority to ensure another killing spree does not occur in the months ahead. Commuting these sentences is not just an act of mercy—it is a decisive step toward justice and human dignity.”
The urgency is prompted by the Trump administration’s impending return, following their resumption of federal executions during a global pandemic which marked a disturbing departure from decades of progress.
Advocates believe that another administration could reinstate this practice, making it critical for President Biden to act now by commuting all existing federal death sentences.
Fair and Just Prosecution said on Monday, “The death penalty has a troubling history in the United States. Studies show that defendants of color are disproportionately sentenced to death. Moreover, the death penalty’s implementation has often ignored evidence of innocence, mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and extreme trauma in the lives of those sentenced to die.”
The letter from the ACLU, Amnesty, SPLC and NAACP, et al, “highlights the moral and legal failings of the death penalty in the United States and stresses the urgency of action to prevent the potential resurgence of federal executions under an incoming Trump administration.”
The groups call on Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to address the irrevocably broken federal death penalty and to “bring America into a new era of moral leadership.”
President Biden was the first presidential candidate to openly oppose the death penalty, and his administration issued a moratorium on federal executions.
With 40 men still on death row, however, the letter emphasizes that commuting federal death sentences is the only irreversible action President Biden can take to prevent the incoming administration from attempting another execution spree.
“President Biden has an opportunity to make history by addressing the racist and unjust federal death penalty system and keep an early campaign promise he made to the American people,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU.
Romero added, “Commuting the sentences of those on death row would help end the death penalty once and for all and prevent a second execution spree by President Trump. Trump’s first act of political theater ended in the execution of 13 people. President Biden shouldn’t allow Trump to repeat that travesty.”
Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said, “President-elect Trump has promised to restart and accelerate the federal death machine, just as he did in his last administration. In the span of only 6 months, the Trump administration executed more people than the 10 previous presidential administrations combined. The executions carried out in his first term demonstrated to the world how the federal death penalty is fundamentally broken and that this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment should be abolished forever. We should take Trump at his word when he says he plans to repeat this horrific killing spree, and Biden must do what he can now to prevent it.”
Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel, Legal Defense Fund said, “Since our founding, LDF has been unwavering in its fight to abolish the death penalty and eliminate racial discrimination from our criminal legal system. The death penalty is rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism and historically weaponized against people of color. From the Groveland Four in 1949 to many capital cases today, Black people are disproportionately impacted by the ultimate punishment. Commuting the sentences of the 40 individuals on federal death row is an unprecedented opportunity for President Biden to cement his commitment to remedying injustice by exercising executive clemency.”
Margaret Huang, president and CEO, The Southern Poverty Law Center, said, “The death penalty is rooted in a deep history of racialized violence. To this day, race is still the biggest predictor of who gets sentenced to death, with Black people accounting for nearly 40% of those on federal death row, despite representing less than 12% of the adult population. And fully 70% of those on federal death row are from the South. Our nation, and particularly the communities that we serve in the Deep South, cannot achieve true racial justice while the death penalty remains in practice.”
Joia Erin Thornton, executive director, FLOCC (Faith Leaders of Color Coalition) added, “President Biden should commute all federal death sentences because doing so would acknowledge and help redress the racial bias built into the federal death penalty system, allow government resources to be redirected to policies that actually make our communities safer, and allow the families of victims and incarcerated persons to focus on healing instead of living in legal limbo.”
Among the signers of the Fair and Just Prosecution letter, County Attorney Laura Conover of Pima County, Arizona, noted, “As the second largest population in Arizona, we simply stopped seeking the death penalty four years ago. When the government has the remaining option of a natural life sentence, which is in fact a sentence to die in prison, then it becomes critical to press our elected officials to re-think whether anything is left to gain by clinging to the old, failed machinery of death that is capital punishment.”
She added, “Put another way, if all of the very real problems with the death penalty can’t be matched by any rational upside, then why would our government want to continue burning taxpayer money on this old, failed scheme? Southern Arizona is proving in fact that we have many, many more important uses for untold millions in taxpayer dollars.”
The ACLU noted that their letter was one of more than a dozen letters released today from hundreds of stakeholders from across the political and faith spectrums calling on President Biden to commute all federal death sentences, including from Black pastors, former corrections officials, business leaders, current and former prosecutors, families who have lost loved ones to homicide, mental health advocates, and many more.
All of the letters can be found here.
